A Typical Case In Point
Here’s a typical case in point and the standard medical answer to the modern plague of prostate disease. A man in his late 40s or early 50s notices a mild but growing problem with his waterworks. He begins to suspect BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia). That's the medical gobble for overgrowth of the prostate gland. When it gets too big, the prostate chokes the hell out of your urinary stream and your sexuality.
As an aside, it is well established that though BPH doesn't affect most men until after age 50, athletes tend to get it earlier in life. Unless they protect themselves, male athletes in strength sports and track and field sports are affected most of all. They have at least an 80% chance of developing some degree of BPH by age 45. Why? Probably because athletes with high levels of muscle mass tend to have higher levels of testosterone than average. African Americans have some of the highest levels of testosterone and, predictably, suffer more BPH and more prostate disease than whites. Part of the testosterone hormone converts to dihydrotestosterone (DHT), the main culprit that causes your prostate to grow beyond normal size.
Back to our typical middle-aged man, let’s call him Bob. He is getting up four or five times a night to urinate. His urinary stream is dwindling. He feels urinary urgency numerous times a day but finds it difficult to initiate urination. Then he begins getting burning and irritation of the prostate after sex, then discomfort on ejaculation. He is finally forced by his symptoms to go for medical help.
After a thorough evaluation, his physician diagnoses BPH together with prostatitis, caused by a low-grade infection of the prostate. Prostatitis isn't a bad guess, because over 90% of men get prostate infections some time or other. He puts our man on antibiotics and gives him a form to get a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. The antibiotics do nothing except make Bob nauseous, but the PSA is devastating. Diagnosis: a 65% chance of prostate cancer. The doctor prescribes androgen-blocking drugs which drain Bob’s energy, his ability to maintain muscle and his sex drive.
Over the next two years Bob loses a lot of muscle, gains many pounds of fat, and becomes a physical and emotional wreck. His sex life declines to non-existent and his marriage goes to hell. He is on three different anti-depressants and walks and talks like a zombie. But it doesn’t reduce his prostate problems. At Bob's two-year examination, his physician detects a palpable lump on digital rectal examination of Bob's prostate, and insists he has a multiple biopsy. Locked in major depression, Bob puts it off for months, fearful that if he did have localized prostate cancer, the biopsy would create needle tracks to leak it out. It's a legitimate fear. Relative to cancer cells, 'needle tracks' created by a biopsy are as big as a six-lane highway, along which cancer cells can migrate to other parts of the body.
Finally, when his PSA goes through the roof, Bob succumbed. But guess what? The multiple biopsy comes back negative. The lump is benign. The PSA and the physician's digit were not as accurate as commonly thought. Bob had spent three years in abject fear, had destroyed his love relationship and decimated his healthy body — all for naught.
That Pesky PSA
It is important to understand that the PSA test has one of the highest false-positive rates of any medical test used today. It's bad business. It is very common to score high on the PSA but show no trace of cancer when subjected to a biopsy, and vice versa.
In one of the latest trials, in 78% of the cases, PSA results of men with prostate cancer are negative, assuring those men that they do not have prostate cancer. By failing to detect it, the PSA falsely classifies them as healthy. Consequently, they take no action to protect their prostates, allowing the disease to progress unchecked.
Worse, when you examine correct cancer diagnosis by the PSA, the rate of detection is just over 20%. So, for every one hundred cases of real prostate cancer, the PSA detects only about 20. And, from the study above, for each one of these 20 it also falsely detects a non-existent cancer in a healthy man. Imagine the effect on your life if you were one of those men falsely predicted by the PSA to be suffering from cancer.
In sum, the PSA predicts as many non-existent cancers as it does real cancers, and misses most of the real cancers anyway.
Even If You Have A Tumor
Even if a localized prostate tumor is correctly detected by the PSA, it may not be a big problem. Autopsy studies of old men who die from other causes show that about one man in every three has a malignant tumor of the prostate — a tumor that was not involved in his death, was never treated, and probably did not cause any great health problem during his life.
Prostate tumors are mostly slow growing and can sit there unnoticed and without symptoms for 20 to 30 years. That's probably the reason why there's no controlled evidence showing that PSA detection of cancer has had any effect whatsoever in reducing prostate disease, or in reducing deaths from prostate cancer. As explained above, existing evidence points in exactly the opposite direction.
In sum, the PSA predicts as many non-existent cancers as it does real cancers, and misses most of the real cancers anyway. Despite all this hard evidence, The American Cancer Society (which positions itself as a medical authority, but is not) recommends the PSA, and has been largely responsible for the growth in use of this inaccurate and soul-destroying test. And some uninformed medicine men take it as gospel.
On the other hand, the International Union Against Cancer advises against routine PSA testing. So does the Canadian Task Force on Periodic Health Examinations. The official health authority in the US, the Preventive Services Task Force, came down solidly against the PSA in its Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, and does not recommend its use.
Thumbs down on the PSA, however, doesn't mean you can forget about your prostate. Latest figures show that prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths of American men. You definitely don't want BPH progressing into cancer. And there are ways to prevent it - if you have the beginnings of a waterworks problem, or even the anticipation that you will develop one in the future, stay tuned for the details.
Here’s a typical case in point and the standard medical answer to the modern plague of prostate disease. A man in his late 40s or early 50s notices a mild but growing problem with his waterworks. He begins to suspect BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia). That's the medical gobble for overgrowth of the prostate gland. When it gets too big, the prostate chokes the hell out of your urinary stream and your sexuality.
As an aside, it is well established that though BPH doesn't affect most men until after age 50, athletes tend to get it earlier in life. Unless they protect themselves, male athletes in strength sports and track and field sports are affected most of all. They have at least an 80% chance of developing some degree of BPH by age 45. Why? Probably because athletes with high levels of muscle mass tend to have higher levels of testosterone than average. African Americans have some of the highest levels of testosterone and, predictably, suffer more BPH and more prostate disease than whites. Part of the testosterone hormone converts to dihydrotestosterone (DHT), the main culprit that causes your prostate to grow beyond normal size.
Back to our typical middle-aged man, let’s call him Bob. He is getting up four or five times a night to urinate. His urinary stream is dwindling. He feels urinary urgency numerous times a day but finds it difficult to initiate urination. Then he begins getting burning and irritation of the prostate after sex, then discomfort on ejaculation. He is finally forced by his symptoms to go for medical help.
After a thorough evaluation, his physician diagnoses BPH together with prostatitis, caused by a low-grade infection of the prostate. Prostatitis isn't a bad guess, because over 90% of men get prostate infections some time or other. He puts our man on antibiotics and gives him a form to get a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. The antibiotics do nothing except make Bob nauseous, but the PSA is devastating. Diagnosis: a 65% chance of prostate cancer. The doctor prescribes androgen-blocking drugs which drain Bob’s energy, his ability to maintain muscle and his sex drive.
Over the next two years Bob loses a lot of muscle, gains many pounds of fat, and becomes a physical and emotional wreck. His sex life declines to non-existent and his marriage goes to hell. He is on three different anti-depressants and walks and talks like a zombie. But it doesn’t reduce his prostate problems. At Bob's two-year examination, his physician detects a palpable lump on digital rectal examination of Bob's prostate, and insists he has a multiple biopsy. Locked in major depression, Bob puts it off for months, fearful that if he did have localized prostate cancer, the biopsy would create needle tracks to leak it out. It's a legitimate fear. Relative to cancer cells, 'needle tracks' created by a biopsy are as big as a six-lane highway, along which cancer cells can migrate to other parts of the body.
Finally, when his PSA goes through the roof, Bob succumbed. But guess what? The multiple biopsy comes back negative. The lump is benign. The PSA and the physician's digit were not as accurate as commonly thought. Bob had spent three years in abject fear, had destroyed his love relationship and decimated his healthy body — all for naught.
That Pesky PSA
It is important to understand that the PSA test has one of the highest false-positive rates of any medical test used today. It's bad business. It is very common to score high on the PSA but show no trace of cancer when subjected to a biopsy, and vice versa.
In one of the latest trials, in 78% of the cases, PSA results of men with prostate cancer are negative, assuring those men that they do not have prostate cancer. By failing to detect it, the PSA falsely classifies them as healthy. Consequently, they take no action to protect their prostates, allowing the disease to progress unchecked.
Worse, when you examine correct cancer diagnosis by the PSA, the rate of detection is just over 20%. So, for every one hundred cases of real prostate cancer, the PSA detects only about 20. And, from the study above, for each one of these 20 it also falsely detects a non-existent cancer in a healthy man. Imagine the effect on your life if you were one of those men falsely predicted by the PSA to be suffering from cancer.
In sum, the PSA predicts as many non-existent cancers as it does real cancers, and misses most of the real cancers anyway.
Even If You Have A Tumor
Even if a localized prostate tumor is correctly detected by the PSA, it may not be a big problem. Autopsy studies of old men who die from other causes show that about one man in every three has a malignant tumor of the prostate — a tumor that was not involved in his death, was never treated, and probably did not cause any great health problem during his life.
Prostate tumors are mostly slow growing and can sit there unnoticed and without symptoms for 20 to 30 years. That's probably the reason why there's no controlled evidence showing that PSA detection of cancer has had any effect whatsoever in reducing prostate disease, or in reducing deaths from prostate cancer. As explained above, existing evidence points in exactly the opposite direction.
In sum, the PSA predicts as many non-existent cancers as it does real cancers, and misses most of the real cancers anyway. Despite all this hard evidence, The American Cancer Society (which positions itself as a medical authority, but is not) recommends the PSA, and has been largely responsible for the growth in use of this inaccurate and soul-destroying test. And some uninformed medicine men take it as gospel.
On the other hand, the International Union Against Cancer advises against routine PSA testing. So does the Canadian Task Force on Periodic Health Examinations. The official health authority in the US, the Preventive Services Task Force, came down solidly against the PSA in its Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, and does not recommend its use.
Thumbs down on the PSA, however, doesn't mean you can forget about your prostate. Latest figures show that prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths of American men. You definitely don't want BPH progressing into cancer. And there are ways to prevent it - if you have the beginnings of a waterworks problem, or even the anticipation that you will develop one in the future, stay tuned for the details.
For more information on Prostate disorders and their treatment options go to: Prostate Health Supplements
